None of the generals in theatre command, including Claude, expected that the immigration and land exchange policy they created for the soldiers of Thundercrash and Monolith would bring a crazy wave of immigration to Cromwell and Balingana.
Of course, the changes weren't that obvious in the next half a year. Half a year later, the generals could only force a smile on their faces as they faced the influx of family members.
Taking the hundred thousand families in Anfiston as an example, it would be impressive if a soldier could bring back five or six of their immediate family members.
There were 130,000 soldiers in the two corps, and on average, there were only about 400,000 to 500,000 family members of the two corps. This number of family members wasn't significant at all, and they could be settled by building a few towns.
However, Claude and the others had forgotten about the changes in the situation. Coupled with the fact that the rich estates were attractive to the poor and the fact that they didn't limit the family members to only immediate family members, many relatives of the soldiers had the chance to take advantage of the loophole.
When a retired military officer brought 40 to 50 relatives to register, the relatives of grand-uncles, cousins, and clansmen opened the eyes of the registrar. The registrar even asked him curiously, "Can you support so many people with your small farm?"
As long as they were willing to work hard, they would be able to make ends meet even if they had to work for the public farms.
The main reason he brought these miscellaneous relatives over was to give them a chance. In another two or three years, whether it was Thundercrash or Monolith, there would definitely be a batch of older soldiers retiring. At that time, if there was a need to recruit new soldiers, he could let these miscellaneous relatives apply. As long as they were recruited, not to mention everything else, they would definitely get their personal property of thirty mu of fertile land …
That retired officer wasn't the only one who thought that way. Many other officers thought the same way. Those who didn't expect it were reminded by their friends.
In the end, even the soldiers of the legions wrote letters to their families and friends, asking them to seize this opportunity.
Coupled with the economic downturn of the kingdom and the death of the old king, Stellin X, who was succeeded by Prince Wedrick, the eldest prince, Hansbach, was nowhere to be found.
It gave the kingdom an ominous feeling that a storm was about to descend. In the end, it led to the largest migration wave in the history of Aueras.
Half a year later, close to two to three million immigrants swarmed into the five colonies under the jurisdiction of the war zone command center, throwing the entire war zone into chaos. Almost everyone was stunned by the huge number of immigrants.
At the same time, the immigration of two to three million people had brought great changes to the colonies. For example, the coastal trade route between Port Tyrrsim, Port Patres, and Port Vebator had become a very busy sea route.
Claude, on the other hand, was quite relaxed. His legs were almost healed.
Apart from spending time with his wife and child in Weyblon Manor, he would sometimes have Gum push his wheelchair to the empty field behind the manor and the two would compare their revolvers.
Without the help of aiming, how were they supposed to hit the target with their hands? The two of them would often argue over who would be shameless enough to secretly aim at the target …
The reason Claude and Gum were able to waste so much copper bullets was because the first production line for the bullets was completed in Anna Ranch.
It was a semi-automatic production line that was half manual and half automatic. The families of ten soldiers were hired and all of them were female workers.
With nine to ten hours of production in a day, they were able to fill and inspect around 12,000 copper bullets for the revolvers.
The completion of the production line meant that large-scale production of revolvers could be brought forward. At the same time, the development of long rifles could proceed as planned.
However, as Claude had licensed the production of the revolvers to the five major military industries of the old noble houses, even if he could mass-produce the revolvers, he would only be able to sell them in the colonies and wouldn't be able to sell them back to the kingdom.
Bolonik and the others believed that weapons like revolvers couldn't be sold among the commoners and could only be purchased by the military.
Due to the exorbitant price of twelve gold crowns per revolver, a copper shell bullet, and a silver thale, Bolonik squeezed out a bit of money and placed an order for a thousand revolvers, each with thirty bullets.
He planned to use the revolvers as the sidearms for the two corps' field officers and their personal guards to ensure their personal safety and prevent further assassination attempts.
That disappointed Angelina and Sonia greatly. They couldn't be bothered with the large-scale production line.
After spending a week, the two of them finished refining all the parts for the 1,000 revolvers in the alchemy array and then assembled them.
Naturally, they were all crude versions without any decorations. As long as they were useful to the military, they could find a way or pay someone to help them.
So, after Claude recovered from his injuries, he went to Angelina's ranch to check on her and Sonia's progress on the long rifles, only to be met with a grumble from Angelina.
She had wanted to use the revolver to make a killing, but she didn't think that the war theatre command would only place an order for a thousand revolvers.
Even though they earned more than seven thousand crowns, it was a tough week for the two of them.
Not to mention, if they were to design a large-scale production line for the revolvers, the profit from the thousand revolvers wouldn't even be enough to cover the cost of construction, equipment and manpower.
Claude didn't have a choice. The war theatre command couldn't afford to spend that much on the production line either.
The royal capital and the kingdom's Ministry of the Army could no longer be bothered with the matters of the overseas colonies.
They only sent him a short message last month, telling him that everything would go on as usual and that it was best not to bother the big shots in the royal capital. The kingdom was currently in a critical situation.
The situation was dire indeed. Prince Hansbach and his entourage had suddenly appeared in the three eastern prefectures of Askilin and seized command of Bluefeather.
After a small bloodless mutiny, most of the high-ranking officers of Bluefeather were escorted back to the royal capital by their subordinates.
That was a sign that Prince Hansbach was about to start a mutiny. The royal capital's emissaries and persuaders all rushed to the three eastern prefectures in hopes of putting an end to the impending mutiny.
So, to the influential figures in the royal capital, what happened in the colonies far away on Nubissia was insignificant. It was best if they could maintain the current state of affairs.
The military expenditure problem that the war zone headquarters was facing was not in the five colonies under the jurisdiction of the war zone, but in the other three overseas colonies.
Tyrrsim, Mormaly and Aduras weren't under the control of war theatre command. They had their own viceroys and commanders in charge of civil and military affairs.
In order to deal with the Shiksan colonial war, the royal capital allocated the taxes from the three colonies to the theatre for military use.
But now, the three colonies refused to hand over their taxes to the theatre for Thundercrash and Monolith's military expenses. The reason they gave was that Port Vebator had been conquered and the colonial war was over.
So, the taxes collected by the three colonies had to be handed over to the kingdom's treasury and couldn't be used by the theatre for military expenses.
During times of peace, the expenditure of the second line corps would be guaranteed by the ministry of the army and couldn't be collected from the provinces themselves.
That was actually a test by the viceroys and commanders of the three colonies to get a share of the tax revenue.
They believed that given the kingdom's current situation, they couldn't care less about trivial matters like the colonies. Plus, the excuses they came up with were very reasonable.
Back then, for the sake of the colonial war, all the taxes collected by the colonies were given to the theatre to pay for the five enhanced folk.
Now that Port Vebator was occupied by the kingdom, it became the kingdom's eighth colony. That meant that there would no longer be a large-scale land war with Shiks. It also meant that the kingdom had won the colonial war.
Since the colonial war was over, there was no longer a need to hand over the taxes collected by the colonies to the theatre for military expenses. They could just collect them and hand them over to the treasury.
Tyrrsim, Mormaly, and Arturas were not affected by the war. Instead, due to Cromwell, Balingana, and Robisto's policy of fortifying their borders and clearing out the countryside during the war, most of the citizens of the three colonies migrated to Tyrrsim, Mormaly, and Arturas. This brought great economic development to the three colonies.
In terms of economic strength, the three colonies were the ones with the best livelihoods and economic development out of all the colonies.
Similarly, the taxes collected by these three directly administered territories each year already became the main pillar of the war zone's military expenditure.
Now that the three colonies wanted to cut off this tax revenue, the acting highest commander of the theatre, General Bolonik, immediately rushed to the three colonies for a discussion.
When Skri went to Anna's farm to receive the thousand custom-made revolvers, he commented to Claude that Bolonik had done a poor job.
He shouldn't have gone to discuss the matter in such a hurry. That would make it seem like the theatre was too anxious about the tax revenue, which could be used against them by the viceroys and commanders.
Since the governors and commanders of the three colonies disregarded the orders of the Ministry of Army and did not provide taxes to the war theatre for military expenditure, then the war theatre should have sent troops there instead of General Bolonik rushing there in such a hurry.
General Skri's worries became reality. When General Bolonik returned, everyone found out that 30% of the tax revenue had been withheld by the governors and admirals of the three colonies, saying that it would be used for the local infrastructure of the three colonies, and the remaining 70% would be used for military expenditure.
Fortunately, due to the occupation of Port Vebator, the lost military expenses could be made up for with the tax revenue and they didn't have to worry about a lack of funds for the time being.
From the tenth month of year 590 to the fourth month of year 591 of the Sacred Light Calendar, the kingdom, the colonies of Nubissia, and the other countries of Freia all experienced events that would go down in history.
First, the old Aueran king, Stellin X, was bedridden for many years before he left for Wargod's Kingdom. The will he left before he left stated that his successor wasn't the eldest prince Hansbach, who had been managing the kingdom for many years, but the second prince Wedrick, who had always been seen as a playboy.
That made the eldest prince leave the royal capital in a fit of rage and his whereabouts were unknown.
During the colonial war on Nubissia, the Aueran colonies captured Port Vebator, the only deep-water port Shiks had on the continent. As a result, Shiks no longer had a foothold on Nubissia and couldn't send troops to the inland colonies. As a result, Shiks' vast inland colonies were slowly swallowed up by the newly formed nikancha nation.
In the same year, a revolver invented by a second-line corps commander named Claude in the Aueran colony of Nubissia was licensed to produce by the five major military industries of Aueras. The revolver was renamed the revolver and began to appear on the stage of firearms on Freia.
Due to its unique design and ease of firing, it won the love of countless nobles and was hailed as the number one defensive weapon of choice.
It was a pity that the five major armaments industries of Aueras didn't have the intention to promote the revolver. They only made it into a luxury item for nobles and used it as a defensive weapon or as a gift.
Every revolver was engraved with intricate family patterns and gold and silver links. Even the cheapest revolver was worth more than a hundred crowns.
The powerful and wealthy people of the various countries in the continent all flaunted their exquisite short revolver as a target to show off to others …
In the 2nd month of Year 591 of the Sacred Light Calendar, the eldest prince of Aueras, Hansbach, whose whereabouts were unknown, suddenly appeared in the three eastern prefectures and seized command of one of the kingdom's trump cards, Bluefeather. The situation in the kingdom immediately became tense and it seemed that a civil war was about to break out.
Compared to the big news brought by Hansbach, the conflict over taxes and military expenses in the colonies was much more uneventful. The theatre suffered a huge loss.
What shook Freia even more was the self-scripted and self-directed drama of King Majid III. It shocked every nation on the continent and gave them a new understanding of how low the king could go.
It all started with the three Greytower magi the emissaries brought back to the royal capital. The three captives quickly put a bounty on Greytower's head by Majid III, the Shiksan king, who offered a large sum of money for them to send people to the war theatre to assassinate a few generals in the war theatre. They wanted the Aueran colonies to fall into internal strife so that they wouldn't have the time to attack Port Vebator to buy time. The news was made public and the nations of Freia were in a heated discussion.
However, Majid III was extremely thick-skinned and claimed that he was being maligned and that he had never placed a bounty on the magi of Greytower. He claimed that it was all Aueras trying to frame him.
However, due to the solid evidence, the public was more inclined towards Aueras.
Majid III held a banquet in the middle of the third month to reiterate that he had nothing to do with the assassination.
Halfway through the banquet, a palace guard came to report that Aueras had sent an envoy to seek an audience.
That piqued the interest of the envoys. They didn't hear about Aueras sending an envoy over. Also, didn't Shiks refuse to allow envoys from Aueras to enter their territory?
However, the two so-called Aueran envoys behaved very strangely. Not only did they not act like envoys, they only knew how to approach Majid III. When they were about ten meters away from him, they took off their robes to reveal the grey robes underneath and attacked him with magic.
According to the description of one of the envoys, Majid III's body was shrouded in countless defensive spells. At that time, when the spells collided with the offensive spells, it was unknown how many envoys were blinded by the light.
The two magi pretending to be envoys were captured on the spot and immediately confessed that the first and second princes of Aueras had hired them to assassinate Majid III.
Unfortunately, Stellin X was already dead and Majid III could only pin the blame on the two princes. He completely forgot that the two princes were at daggers drawn and were about to fight for the throne. There was no way they would conspire to assassinate the king of Shiks.
The other two assassins weren't professional either. Rather than pretending to be Greytower magi, it was more accurate to say that they were asking to be captured. Many of the envoys present saw through the trick and watched Majid III put on a show of a thief calling a thief to catch a thief. From then on, they gained a deeper understanding of the king's shamelessness.
When the news of the assassination spread to Aueras, it was said that the prime minister, Duke Duncan, coughed up blood in anger at Majid III's shamelessness.
However, Aueras was facing a new civil war. In order to quell the conflict between the two princes, Aueras couldn't be bothered with Shiks for the time being.